Sitting in Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire in August, at the end of a much
better than average summer, it seems a not inappropriate theme after a
dreadful start to 2011. Of course if you had a classical British
education you will know that it was a case of 'pride cometh (or goeth) before
a fall' and Richard ends the play offering his kingdom for a horse... We
don't have a horse but we are grateful to those who do because they keep
Yuehong's new roses growing well.

As we had been warned, when we arrived in early June 2011, the garden was a
little overgrown, but after a few days, the worst of it had been removed, 90%
first by hand and the remainder with the mower.

As for the fall, it wasn't me but Yuehong who came off her bike and
dislocated her elbow. It was extremely painful for her, but the British
National Health Service rose to the occasion and for me the only pain was
paying for a taxi home from the hospital. Fortunately, a Good Samaritan
rescued our bikes and returned them next morning. She took consolation in
the way she knows best... Coffee cream, chocolate fudge and cheese cakes,
each reduced to half price or better from our local shop.

Soon, we had to hire a car for the day because Yiran had his visa, there
was just time to stop for a quick look at Bibury on the way to Heathrow in
early July. We helped find him a very part time ('Mac') job in Gloucester,
at home he spends most of the time asleep while he sits out his waiting
period until he is a freer agent.

Builders being builders, the new wooden floor to replace
the carpets lost in the flood was not quite perfect, but that was soon
rectified and I varnished the skirting and architraves. This is how it looks
and it's tea time with the latest cake well on its way to being history,
some Java sugar mill plates are behind:

As effectively a 'retired gricer', most readers would have expected me to
have given a high priority to mounting my collection. In practice, it's had
to wait for the occasional rainy day and is still far from finished, in
particular a lot of Brasso needs to be applied. This is most of my
Indonesian PNKA plates,
the gap at the bottom right is 'in memoriam' for a Henschel stolen in transit from
China along with a fair amount of bric-a-brac. I had many wonderful
experiences in China over the years but, alas, more bad experiences there
than in the whole of the rest of the world put together by far; I have no
plans to go back. (That was 2011, now by 2013 I have found a replacement
at great expense.)

Continuing the wood theme, I demolished as much of next door's hedge and conifers as I
could get away with but also rebuilt our garden seat whose rotten wood had
collapsed under me:

Not all the excess wood went up in a bonfire which was so intense that
the hedge caught fire - being hawthorn it is rapidly recovering. Summer
evenings have been cool this year, so we've haven't had much opportunity to
use our 'chimenea':

When we stocked our country house garden in China with roses in 2006,
they came at an unrepeatable bargain price. Good such plants in the UK start
at GBP 10, so if Yuehong wants them in quantity they are going to have to
come in non-standard ways. Two came with the house and are well established.
The third was a house warming present to ourselves and is currently looking
quite comfortable preparing for a good show next year, The fourth was a
hand-me-down potbound rambler which sat and sulked for 3 weeks in its new
home and then decided it liked where it was and started to shoot ever
upwards. To call the next two 'end of season' left overs would be kind, they
were in plain awful condition but very cheap. We were meant to be walking
home from a recce visit to the garden centre at Huntley, but in the end we
had to come back by bus. Did you ever see a rose with brown leaves?

There's been so much to do that the pond took a while to
fix, with the water plants cut back and a new pump installed for the
waterfall feature. One of our many frogs was so chuffed that it came out to
have its picture taken:

Meanwhile, the nature of our weather and location dictates that the best
part of the day is around dawn, half way through August that happens at
06.00. This is what it looks like looking east and west, taken 5 seconds
apart, neither picture has been 'Photoshopped' except for cropping. Guess
who was sent out with the camera and who stayed in bed looking out of the
window?

The greenhouse looks a lot better now Yuehong has cleaned the mould off
it. There's a pile of wood to chop parked by the shed next to it and the top
shrub bed is still totally out of control; there's a lot still to be done,
it won't be completed before winter comes.